Paul T. Guillory - Emotionally Focused Therapy with African American Couples: Love Heals

Emotionally Focused Therapy with African American Couples: Love Heals is an essential guide that integrates emotionally focused therapy (EFT) with cultural humility. It provides a pathbreaking, evidence-based model of couples work that reinforces the bond between partners in the face of race-based distress.

Guillory explores and brings a deep understanding of the legacy of racial trauma and the cultural strengths of African American couples by using real-life case studies. The chapters in the book focus on several key clinical issues in the field, such as communication problems, anxiety, infidelity, depression, and porn. Each case study is enhanced by a consultation with EFT master therapist Sue Johnson.

The book is an essential text for students and mental health professionals looking to provide culturally competent therapeutic interventions. It will also appeal to psychologists, mental health workers, social workers, marriage and family therapists, and religious leaders.

Paul T. Guillory, PhD, is Associate Professor in the Psychology Department at the University of California, Berkeley, USA. He is a certified supervisor and therapist of emotionally focused therapy. He is also a former chairperson of the Northern California Community of Emotionally Focused Therapy.

This outstanding book provides therapists practicing EFT with African American couples with a deeper understanding of the cultural strengths as well as the legacy of racial trauma these couples may bring to therapy. Both experienced and new clinicians searching for ways to increase their cultural competency will be inspired by the vivid case examples as well as the discussions with Dr. Sue Johnson. This text will make a wonderful contribution to courses addressing couple and family therapy as well as diversity training in all mental health disciplines. It is a trailblazing book, and it will have a major impact on our field.

Nancy Boyd-Franklin, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Rutgers University; author of Black Families in Therapy: Understanding the African American Experience

The challenges of clinicians providing culturally informed therapeutic interventions to their clients has been made a little easier today by Guillorys text. A blending of the theoretical with the pragmatic, a meshing of the thinking with the authenticity of African-centered emotional connectedness and interdependence, and a synthesizing of the historical intergenerational trauma with the contemporary challenges of Black life in America into this EFT model make this volume a must have resource for mental health providers.

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D., Distinguished Psychologist, Association of Black Psychologists; Fellow, APA

This unique clinical volume is essential reading for therapists seeking to provide effective couple therapy to African American clients! Guillory offers a compelling challenge and illustrates a powerful path forward. The challenge is to become culturally humble by learning about the bonds of African American love in hostile environments. The path forward is to integrate a cultural lens into the empirically validated Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) model.

Lorrie Brubacher, M.Ed., EFT therapist, supervisor, and trainer; author of Stepping into Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy: Key Ingredients of Change (2018, Routledge)

Paul T. Guillory

First published 2022
by Routledge
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2022 Paul T. Guillory

The right of Paul T. Guillory to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers.

Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

A catalog record for this book has been requested

ISBN: 978-0-367-37572-0 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-0-367-37573-7 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-0-429-35512-7 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9780429355127

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